


The Warriors of Light's Guide to Perfect Surprise Parties

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Birthday Party, But It Certainly Surprised The Birthday Idiot, Disaster Best Friends Attempt To Make A Perfect Surprise Party, Gen, What Happens Next Should Not Have Surprised Them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: “We sure screwed that one up. All of us,” said Branden with his face covered with one hand. “Congratulations on surviving another year against the odds, Ardbert.”





	The Warriors of Light's Guide to Perfect Surprise Parties

It was surprisingly hard to stay with his friends when they were all starting to be known even here in Lakeland. Norvrandt remained their favourite place about, seeing as they all hailed from here. But before he even had time to properly talk to the villagers, his friends were all gone. Honestly, he was impressed with how quickly they had managed to vanish in this place that glowed purple and pink in the warm morning sun like this. None of them even wore anything that would make them vanish—but before he had a chance to even complain about it or look for them, someone asked him if he was a traveller good with a weapon. It wasn’t anything dramatic, merely watching some cattle for a day, but… strange.

Normally Renda-Rae, Branden and Nyelbert were most liable to immediately get into a fight, Cylva thrived on seeing her fellows get into petty scuffles because she thought they were hilarious, and Lamitt was nowhere to be seen. He pondered on that for a while, scratching his head a few times and almost stammering as he looked around hoping to catch a glimpse of his friends

Ardbert agreed in the end. The kid looked rather relieved that she wouldn’t have to be out there on her own.

* * *

Lakeland was peaceful this time of the year. The Elves certainly were not pleased about anything or anyone settling here, but in the outer regions of the place there was no need for them to attack anyone. Cylva often remarked that she partially understood where her fellows came from but also that all that violence was ridiculous and unnecessary. Before long they would get what was coming for them, and then left it at that. Ardbert himself enjoyed the breeze in this place as he sat on a hill overlooking the herd of sheep—the girl was tending to some, and he was merely meant to keep watch in any case. Random strangers didn’t have to know that he was the son of shepherds himself and that he was more than capable of taking care of them himself. He’d been content with the plain life until he wasn’t—unfortunately being able to teach a child how to read generally meant that it would read, and Ardbert decided that a shepherd’s life simply wasn’t for him. It had been years by this point since he left, since the very day that Lamitt came across him just as she left her mountain home in Kholusia.

He was happy. Happier than he had ever been, but something about watching a child tend to a flock of sheep brought back memories. His parents were long dead, yet he hadn’t had to mourn them on his own as he would have had to had he stayed to become a shepherd. There were ups and downs to it but knowing that all his friends shared his strange gift that had tormented him since his early childhood had been so utterly relieving. Suddenly he wasn’t the strange child that would space out for minutes at a time any longer but just another cog in the machine that was their group. They often would have the same visions at the same time; sometimes it was one of them in the middle of something.

From the moment Lamitt accepted his apology and said that she would accompany him to Eulmore for the time being his life had changed—and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He leaned backwards a little and stretched.

Time passed slowly, with the sun travelling and the sheep bleating. Eventually however the girl came over and sat down next to him, crossed her legs and looked at him with wide eyes.

“Thank you.”

He shrugged with a smile, but the girl shook her head.

“Not many people come through our village, much less people willing to listen to a kid. There’s been wolves on the run lately and I….”

Ardbert snorted and put a hand on her head. “Kid, if a wolf as much as shows its ugly maw anywhere I can see, I’ll take care of it. If you see one, you let me know. That’s what we agreed on doing, right? And besides, people who don’t listen to kids are usually jerks anyway.” She was looking at him with eyes as wide as some Mystel with round pupils rather than Renda-Rae’s slit ones were. “Say, rather than paying me for my duties, how about you let me help you sheer some of these sheep?”

“C-Can you even—“

“My parents were shepherds. I’d do better at this than my friends in any case.”

The girl was beaming at him in a way that almost rivalled the sun. “Y-Yes! Of course, Mister!”

Tomorrow they’d be on the road again. There was a rumour that the Shadowkeeper had been sighted and they knew that in order to restore peace to Norvrandt and prevent the rest of the world to fall into disarray, they needed to take care of that person. That was what they were born for.

But for this one blissful day of him turning yet another year older, Ardbert could enjoy the life he had deliberately left behind the moment he could. The girl at least warmed up to him after that and starte endlessly chattering. Talked about the whimsy of a small village in the countryside, something he had heard plenty of times but also something that always sounded so much better out of a child’s mouth. They were so easily pleased by that small life they led whereas the adults all started complaining at a point.

* * *

He did have to kill a wolf in the end, and once the sun started setting he all but shooed the girl and the flock back to the village. Something… distinctly smelled burned there. Not the sort of burning you’d smell when someone was making stew, but the singed hair of any sort smell. Ardbert parted with the girl and the sheep and decided that if something burned, Nyelbert was definitely involved and went to investigate. There was a disconcerting red splatter on a wall and a puddle of it on the ground below that—and the burning smell came from… just over there.

Had something attacked the village in his absence?

“Nyelbert?”

No answer. The Elf was absent and the smell of something burnt was being slowly swept away by the evening breeze.

“Lamitt? Renda?” Of course the Dwarf and the Mystel did not answer. “Branden? Cylva?”

He could have sworn somewhere in the distance he heard a wolf howl, but all Ardbert felt in that moment was dread. His beloved friends never went off somewhere without all of them accounted for. When the tunnels had collapsed Renda had almost anxiously waited for them to return. Not that she would have ever admitted having felt anything but irritation; she was an emotional woman but hated being called out for being one. It was endearing. Every other time they were somehow separated they waited, or at least returned to the last place they saw one another in the evening. That was what they eventually agreed on doing—with a smile on his face as he looked into the tankard Branden had said that during the day the Warriors of Light were the property of the world, but at night they were free to be themselves and find one another again.

But they were gone.

He passed an overturned table with a broken chair that looked as if someone had brought a pair of swords down upon it with a familiar feathered arrow sticking out of one of the table’s legs.

It looked as if the entire village had vanished, but as he turned back around to look for the girl all he found were the sheep in their pen. Just his luck; children were great at the vanishing act. But how exactly had Branden managed to vanish? The man was about as good at that as Ardbert was at maths beyond counting to ten.

He paused to scratch his neck a little in confusion—but right in that moment he heard familiar short steps.

“Lamitt!”

Indeed, there she was.

Covered in what looked like blood. He felt his blood drain from his face as he dropped to his knees to make sure the healer wasn’t injured—only to realise that it wasn’t blood. It looked and smelled like… tomatoes?

He must have worn a stupid expression, because her scowl turned into one of her fond smiles. She then kind of awkwardly looked away and averted her gaze; but in the dark and under all that red… sludge… it was rather hard to tell what was going on with her.

“I know, I know,” she said very, very slowly. “Don’t start asking. The warehouse. That’s where we’re hiding.”

“Hiding?”

“Don’t ask your stupid questions, just come with me.” And with that, she grabbed his hand and started pulling. Of course, her being a Dwarf and him being a Hume, it turned into him nearly crashing right onto his face as she did, and once he was on his feet proper he was hunched over and stumbling after her like a drunk fool. He couldn’t exactly tell her that she was crushing his hand—Lamitt had that aura of seriousness and embarrassment around her that she had worn the day she took off the helm and renounced her allegiance to the family. Which, as he knew very well by then, took a whole lot of gut because the family was everything to a Dwarf.

It made him wonder if they had killed someone while he had been away.

But the closer to the warehouse they got as she pulled him along, the more he started to think about it. No, they wouldn’t kill someone. But, as it went through his head just as Lamitt let go of his hand to let him stand up straight, it was… it was his _nameday._

“Oh. Oh _no,”_ he whispered, and Lamitt sighed and shook her head.

“Oh yes.”

“Lamitt, no, you guys—“

She all but kicked the door open, the sudden movement making him jump backwards a little. Then the lights went on, loud cheers erupted—and he saw his friends, all of them in various states of complete disaster. Lamitt covered in tomatoes, Renda-Rae looked as if someone had tried to burn her fur off, _was that an arrow sticking out of Nyelbert’s shoulder!?_

“We sure screwed that one up. All of us,” said Branden with his face covered with one hand. “Congratulations on surviving another year against the odds, Ardbert.”

He blinked a few times, stumped. Something vaguely dangerous-looking but delicious-smelling was piled on a table. There were enough chairs for the whole village and them, and the villagers all looked as if they had gotten into the same shenanigans as his friends.

Cheerful congratulations erupted from everyone, and he found himself dragged into the warehouse and swept along for dances and the like.

He truly forgot to focus for a while, reminded of festivals they held in his home village. Eventually he found himself sitting next to his friends at the table, people chattering loudly and still cheerfully despite the fact that it was getting rather late.

Lamitt had finally removed the arrow from Nyelbert’s shoulder, and Renda-Rae was nursing a burn on her face. Ardbert shook his head at that with a confused laugh.

“Cylva, what the hell happened here? Like, it’s a nice surprise and all that but… what did you do to each other?”

Cylva crossed her arms and closed her eyes.

“Where to start with that… mhm. ‘Tis best if I start at the beginning and focus on who screwed up what in order. Right then, the beginning. Lamitt.”

**Author's Note:**

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